God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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What on God’s green earth does dynamite, a chemical explosive, have to do with the Gospel of Christ?
What would be a fitting thing to give up, especially during the season of Lent?
Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and eternal life aren't handed out by God because we deserve it.
In the twinkling of that eye the perishable will become imperishable, and our bodies will be changed and become more glorious than we ever could have imagined.
Then He went to the coffin. He touched it, like a carpenter sizing up the piece of wood He plans to turn into some sort of new creation, running His hand down its side.
It is the strangest of morgues—people arrive dead as doornails and leave alive.
On the television show Portlandia—a satirical comedy centered on hipster culture in Portland, Oregon—one episode highlights a conversation between the characters as Carrie and Alexandra look through Fred’s endless photo album of the places he’s traveled.
So it is with my little garden as well; dead, so it would seem. Nothing. Barren.
It's easy to forget that today, just like then, most people who laud Luther publicly as a reformer, revolutionary, and so on, secretly reject his teaching because it's too much to take.
by Philip Melanchthon, translated by Scott L. Keith, Ph.D.; edited by Kurt Winrich
This evening we will together take a very abbreviated look at what led Luther down the long road to the discovery of the Gospel.
The same can be said of the Reformation. I have often heard both Roman Catholic and Lutheran brothers and sisters bemoan the celebration of the Reformation.